At INFODAD, we rank everything we review with plus signs, on a scale from one (+) [disappointing] to four (++++) [definitely worth considering]. We mostly review (+++) or better items. Very rarely, we give an exceptional item a fifth plus. We are independent reviewers and, as parents, want to help families learn which books, music, and computer-related items we and our children love...or hate. INFODAD is a service of TransCentury Communications, Inc., Fort Myers, Florida, infodad@gmail.com.

November 20, 2014

(+++) MINGLED MUSICS

Christina Rusnak: Chat; Chill;
Highline. Big Round Records. $12.99.

Kim Halliday: Halflight and other
works. Ravello. $14.99.

Gerald Cohen: Works for Clarinet
and Chamber Ensemble. Navona. $16.99.

The PARMA Recordings labels
– Navona, Ravello and Big Round Records – provide useful and consistently
well-played samplings of music that is available elsewhere only rarely, if at
all. Collectively, the labels not only show the continuing dynamism of today’s
classical composers but also give interested listeners a chance to hear the
many ways in which composers, whether they self-identify as “classical” or not,
make use of the increasing hybridization of musical forms. For various reasons,
these recordings are not usually the sort that will attract a wide audience,
but as niche products, they are almost always of interest to listeners already
familiar with the composers and/or the forms in which they choose to work. For
example, few listeners who do not know Christina Rusnak’s esthetic will want to
spend $12.99 for 26 minutes of her music arranged for big band and large jazz
ensemble. But this Big Round Records release will be attractive to people who
respond to Rusnak’s atmospheric compositional sense and the ways in which she
tries to reflect aspects of modern life through instrumentation. Thus, Chat uses instruments to represent
intermingling human voices and experiences as found in Internet chat rooms. Chill is intended to showcase “cool
jazz,” with jazz’s typical mixture of relaxed sections and livelier ones with a
“swing” feeling to them. Highline is
designed to represent outdoor spaces and the opportunities they offer in a
crowded urban environment for reflection and aimless wandering. The works are
pleasant to hear even without knowing their intended topics, and they sound
quite good in these arrangements by Dave Richards.

Kim Halliday’s music is
influenced more by rock than jazz and is most often heard at the movies, for
which he often composes. A new Ravello CD offers 17 short tracks by him, some
vocal and some instrumental, with elements drawn from film, rock and electronic
music. Halliday himself performs on guitar and is responsible, with Martin Lister,
for the arrangements, loops and programming that are central to all this music.
Lister, the disc’s producer, is also heard on keyboard and drums, and several
other performers get “vox” credits for specific tracks: Angie Giles, Laura
Glover, Dave Maybrick, and Lara and Alexis Siougas. The technical elements of
this music are more central to its effect than the specific performers, and
there is not all that much to distinguish any particular track from any other
except for different instrumental emphases and changing uses of physical and
electronic sounds. The tracks’ titles are supposed to point listeners in
particular aural directions – “Cold Moon,” “Creepers,” “Hellingly Hospital,” “Deluge,”
“7 Deaths” and so forth – but these are at most indications of atmosphere, not
topics to which the music adheres slavishly. The pieces suggest emotions of
various sorts without ever delving into any of them particularly deeply – a
not-surprising state of affairs for a film-music composer – and will mainly
interest listeners who find their combinations of form and instrumentation
intriguing.

The instrument that is the
primary focus of a new Navona CD of music by Gerald Cohen is the clarinet.
Cohen’s music here shows jazz and traditional-Jewish influences as well as an
appreciation of elements of classical forms. Vasko Dukovski is the clarinetist
in all four works on the disc, and Alexandra Joan appears as pianist in them
all. Two of the four pieces are in single movements: Variously Blue for clarinet, violin (Jennifer Choi) and piano, and Grneta Variations for clarinet duo
(Dukovski and Ismail Lumanovski) and piano – the trio collectively called the
Grneta Ensemble. Both of these one-movement works are in variation form, the
first using a strongly blues-influenced theme and the second designed to
highlight interplay between the two clarinets as well as among the
three-performer ensemble. Also on this CD, the Grneta Ensemble performs Sea of Reeds, which the composer calls
“Five Songs for Clarinet Duo and Piano” and which changes five Jewish,
Hebrew-language vocal works that Cohen has written into instrumental clarinet
showpieces. There is strong Jewish influence as well in Yedid Nefesh for clarinet, viola (Maria Lambros) and piano. Based
on a Sephardic song, the five-movement work explores the melody in considerable
detail, from the inward-looking to the exuberant. This is the longest work on
the disc, nearly twice the length of any of the others, and gives Cohen the
chance to take a single kernel of an idea and run it through some very
wide-ranging paces indeed. The use of viola makes this a particularly
mellow-sounding piece, with the string instrument complementing the clarinet’s
range to fine effect. The disc will be of particular interest to clarinet
fanciers and to listeners interested in the adaptation of Jewish melodies and
songs to a series of trios with differing instrumental makeup.

Two of the four works on a
new Navona CD of the music of Paul Osterfield are also trios, but here the
composer’s inspiration lies in nature and in specific performers’ capabilities
rather than in a particular religious or cultural context. Sound and Fury was written for and is here played by the Blakemore
Trio (Carolyn Huebl, violin; Felix Wang, cello; Amy Dorfman, piano). It is a
three-movement work of considerable contrasts, using lyricism as a springboard
to virtuosic and intensely rhythmic passages. Smoky Mountain Autumn, also in three movements, is an attempt to
portray Tennessee nature scenes, its three movements designed to be musical
visions of the region’s fall foliage, as interpreted through the sounds of
violin (Andrea Dawson), horn (Angela DeBoer) and piano (Lynn Rice-See). There
is nothing particularly distinguished in the tone painting here, but the music
is certainly well-crafted. So it is as well in Kandinsky Images for violin (Michael Jorgensen) and piano (Caleb
Harris) – a piece intended to interpret four of the painter’s works in musical
terms. The work does not stand on its own particularly well, although listeners
familiar with the specific Kandinsky paintings will enjoy deciding for
themselves how well Osterfield has reflected them. Pianist Harris is both the
performer and the person for whom Osterfield wrote the final work on this CD, Études
for Piano, Book 1, an
interesting set of six pieces in which, as the title indicates, the composer
sets out to give pianists chances to display their prowess – specifically, in
syncopation, arpeggiation, runs, chords and other elements of keyboard
performance. These works do not extend significantly beyond the “display” range:
there is not much musical meat on their bones, aside from the technical elements
they showcase. But they are, like the rest of the music on this disc,
well-constructed by a composer who has filtered the influences of the past
through his own clear sensibility.